40-somethings capable of turning back the clock

To weakly paraphrase Bob Dylan, the golfing times they are a-changing. There is a rock-solid generation of 40-somethings on the PGA Tour who are on the verge of passing the torch to a new breed of driver-bombing linksters who are currently in their 20s. The torch is being passed as we speak.

Vijay Singh has won three major titles and has 58 victories worldwide in a career that first began with a win almost 30 years ago at the 1984 Malaysian PGA Championships. He has also won a bundle of money in the process. He turned 50 years of age earlier this year. He can still compete on the PGA Tour, and yet he had only one top-10 finish in a major during the past seven years.

The 42-year-old Padraig Harrington dominated the golf scene as recently as 2007 and 2008. He won three major titles in a 13-month span. A world-class player who has always been under the radar, Harrington has 28 worldwide wins. Yet he hasn't had a European or American tour victory since he won the British Open and PGA Championship in the summer of 2008. Long known as a diligent practice player, Harrington isn't able to put in as much practice time as he'd like because of various injuries. He has fallen out of the world top 100 and won't be eligible for the Masters this spring if he can't turn things around quickly.

Ernie Els turned back the clock when he won the 2012 British Open. It was his fourth major title. He was 42 years old. The winner of 66 tournaments worldwide, the Big Easy found victory lane for the first time in 1991 at the Amatola Sun Classic on South Africa's Sunshine Tour. He might have had more major titles except for The Great Striped One always being in his way. He had three runner-up finishes in major championships in 2000, coming in second to Tiger Woods each time. Els has always had membership on the American and European tours, but he's finding it harder than ever to maintain his status on both circuits.

Phil Mickelson channeled his inner-Ernie Els this past summer and won the 2013 British Open as a 43-year-old. It was the fifth major triumph to go along with 51 regular tour wins. Phil has only been a professional for 21 years but he has been around the elite golf scene for some time longer. He won the Northern Telecom Open in 1991 as an amateur and a college golfer.

Nowadays, Mickelson has nagging issues with arthritis. However, that hurt is nowhere near the pain Phil still feels from his six runner-up finishes in the U.S. Open, including the one last June. He will definitely spend the next handful of years in a Don Quixote-like quest to prevail in the National Open and secure the career grand slam. When the U.S. Open returns to Pinehurst next June, Mickelson will be 44 years old.

When the Masters comes around next spring, Tiger Woods will be 38 years old, a tour regular since the 1996 season. While he isn't as old as Singh, Els and Mickelson, he is aged. Tiger has been around the world golf scene for a very long time. As a 16-year-old, he played in the Nissan Los Angeles Open, his first PGA Tour event. He was a high school sophomore.

Everyone knows Woods as arguably the second-best golfer of all time. He has won 14 major championships, second only to Jack Nicklaus. His 79 PGA Tour victories are second only to Sam Snead. He has 64 other wins in Europe, Japan, Asia and Australia. He also had four surgeries on his left knee. He has demonstrated difficulty in putting fearlessly over the weekends of recent major championships. Tiger last won a grand slam event at the 2008 U.S. Open. Dare I suggest that Woods is just as old as someone like the 44-year-old Mickelson when it comes to golf years. His body doesn't feel like it's a 38-year-old.

Of course, it's not improbable to think that a 40-something can't win a major golf championship. In the year of Adam Scott, Justin Rose and Jason Dufner, it just so happened that Phil Mickelson won a major, too. Ernie Els did the same the year before. Darren Clarke was 42 years old when he won the 2011 British Open for his first major title. Tom Kite was the same age as Clarke when he notched his major breakthrough, winning the 1992 U.S. Open in the howling winds at Pebble Beach.

True, Clarke and Kite were one-hit wonders when they won that lone major at age 42, but other 40-somethings have come through with major victories to pad their major championship resume. During a professional career that stretched over 30 years, Raymond Floyd won the 1969 PGA, the 1976 Masters and, at age 39, won the 1982 PGA. Four years later Floyd extracted himself from a back-nine logjam, shot 32 during the front nine, and won the 1986 National Open at Shinnecock Hills. At age 43, Floyd was the oldest winner of the U.S. Open, eclipsing the age mark set by Englishman Ted Ray in 1920.

Floyd's age record lasted all of four years. In the 1990 U.S. Open at Medinah, Hale Irwin made an improbable 50-foot birdie putt on the final hole to get into a playoff. He won the next day over journeyman Mike Donald and had a third Open title to his name, this time as a 45-year-old.

In 1980, Jack Nicklaus won the U.S. Open at Baltusrol and ran away with the PGA Championship later that summer as a 40-year-old. The wins were the 16th and 17th major titles of his illustrious career. During the next five years, Nicklaus would start to downsize his golfing schedule as his very active children got older and more involved. He was also starting to wear down physically. From 1981 through 1985, Nicklaus would have seven top-10 finishes in majors, including three runner-up finishes.

At the 1986 Masters, Nicklaus caught lightning in a bottle. Four shots behind Greg Norman, Nicklaus carded a final-nine 6-under-par 30 for a one-stroke win over Kite and Norman. It was marvelous theatre. At age 46, Nicklaus was the oldest winner of the Masters.

The golfing world is ever so quickly moving into the generation of Rory McIlroy, Dustin Johnson and Jordan Spieth. The sun is setting on Tiger and his multiple major-winning peers like Phil, Vijay, Padraig and Ernie. A new era in professional golf is on the horizon.